[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Four days to go. Cassini's crossing Titan's orbit inbound.

[alan]

Flyby page is up
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/tit...60430/index.cfm

[Decepticon]

Odd I have not been able to access any Cassini website this week.

[volcanopele]

here is the swath overlain on the current basemap. In addition to central Xanadu, RADAR will also cover portions of eastern Shangri-la, seen repeatedly by ISS. Among the interesting features there are Shikoku Facula (formerly Great Britain; a land of apparent channels), Guabonito (a possible partially buried impact crater), and Kerguelen Facula.

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[Decepticon]

How the encounter go? Not one raw up yet.

[Thorsten]

Some raw images from T13 are already up - including a great view of the "New Territories", east of Fensal/Aztlan/Quivira!
I can hardly wait for the RADAR data, although - I think - it usually takes something like one week until the first press release.

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[volcanopele]

Cool stuff. More should be down in the next few days.

[Decepticon]

VP Can we expect processed images soon?

[Thorsten]

While waiting for the release of the T13 radar data, I came across this beautiful painting of a Titanian landscape from the January 1985 issue of National Geographic – good old innocent pre-Cassini times!
The impact crater on the painting might resemble Guabonito, the broken ring of bright material in the darkness of Shangri-La, which is hopefully covered by the T13 radar (keeping fingers crossed!).
Of course, the real Guabonito is most probably surrounded by a “sea” of sand dunes, and not of liquid hydrocarbons.

Painting by Ludek Pesek © National Geographic Society.

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[ljk4-1]

While waiting for the release of the T13 radar data, I came across this beautiful painting of a Titanian landscape from the January 1985 issue of National Geographic – good old innocent pre-Cassini times!
The impact crater on the painting might resemble Guabonito, the broken ring of bright material in the darkness of Shangri-La, which is hopefully covered by the T13 radar (keeping fingers crossed!).
Of course, the real Guabonito is most probably surrounded by a “sea” of sand dunes, and not of liquid hydrocarbons.

Painting by Ludek Pesek © National Geographic Society.

Thanks very much for sharing this, Thorsten.

[Thorsten]

It was a pleasure, ljk4-1, but the credit actually belongs to Mr. Pesek, (1919 - 1999), a great space artist - especially his works on Mars. Still, it should help us while away the time until the RADAR team releases the first portions of the SAR swath.

[The Messenger]

The choice of colors in that painting are interesting, because it is close to the 'true' reddish hue assigned to the Huygens DISR images.

[JRehling]

The choice of colors in that painting are interesting, because it is close to the 'true' reddish hue assigned to the Huygens DISR images.

I think it's interesting that there are just three other worlds in the solar system with a solid surface and enough atmosphere to make the sky something other than black, and all three of them have orange skies.

(I suppose in the right place at the right time, you would see something besides black in the plumes of Enceladus, Io, or Triton.)

FWIW, it's also interesting that every atmosphere we know of is dominated (>75%) by one of three gases: CO2, H2, or N2. In a universe of infinite variety, some things come up again and again.

[The Messenger]

I think it's interesting that there are just three other worlds in the solar system with a solid surface and enough atmosphere to make the sky something other than black, and all three of them have orange skies.

(I suppose in the right place at the right time, you would see something besides black in the plumes of Enceladus, Io, or Triton.)

FWIW, it's also interesting that every atmosphere we know of is dominated (>75%) by one of three gases: CO2, H2, or N2. In a universe of infinite variety, some things come up again and again.

There is a very small percentage of 'helium stars' the progenitors of supernova type Ib. (http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/snr.html)

[volcanopele]

Crops from the portion of the SAR swath played back Monday are now online. More crops from the rest of the swath, over Xanadu, should be released in the coming days.

Shikoku Facula (formerly Great Britain)
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08426
This is one of my favorite features on Titan and it is nice to see it in a new light, so to speak. The basic shape of Shikoku is visible here, though a few differences from the ISS view are apparent, such as the apparent impact crater in Northeastern Shikoku, which is not associated with an albedo variation, as well as some patchiness to the southern part of the facula. Also note the channels which appear to run from west to east in Shikoku. The ~east-west trending features to the east of Shikoku are dunes.

Guabonito
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08425
Another of my favorite features is visible at the center of this cutout. Guabonito consists of a ring of near-IR bright material within the Shangri-la dark region. In radar, it still appears as a ring of RADAR bright material. I still favor the partially buried impact crater hypothesis, but this data doesn't rule out the possibility that Guabonito is a cryovolcanic caldera. The extreme western margin of Xanadu is also visible in this cut out at the lower right.

RADAR and ISS comparison movie
http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1996
This short animation (trust me download the Flash file), shows a comparison between the RADAR SAR data taken on Sunday and an ISS mosaic of the same area from T8 (October 28, 2005). Note the differences in Shikoku, particularly with that dark spot in northeastern Shikoku.